Disney/Pixar's 'Coco' best film of the year

Coco strikes the right chord from the beginning of the film. It will remind you of what Pixar is capable when they choose to tell an original story. This is not a sequel or any part of a shared universe (unless you believe that all of Pixar’s films are in the same universe. It is an original story that has all the guts, joy, sorrow and emotions of the best Pixar films. On par with the first 8 minutes of Up, Coco is beautiful and moving. If Pixar has to make Cars 4 or Monsters Retirement to mitigate the risk of a story like this, I’ll go see them if it means they get to make another new film and not rehash the same old stuff. In fact, this movie was so good that I would probably be best served not seeing any other film this year (and Star Wars: The Last Jedi is coming out)!

Make no bones about it, Coco is the best movie of the year. We need more stories like this, and that means everyone needs to turn out in droves. (Imagine if Coco opened to $200 million, which is the prediction for Star Wars!) Stop reading now. Click the save button in your browser and go see Coco before you read anything further. You will be glad you did. Once you come back, you can scroll past the trailer and ads to get to the meat of this review. Thanks for stopping by…

Spoiler Alert

There are moments in Coco that are safe. When the lead character falls from the building, you know what is going to happen if you have been paying attention. The storyline also has a callback to Guardians of the Galaxy 2, but in this case, the callback is so much more. With the allegations leveled at several prominent Hollywood execs and stars including Pixar’s own John Lasseter, the subtext that is provided during the big reveal is unmistakable, even if it was unintentional. Still, the beauty and pacing of the story coupled with my lack of knowledge about the Day of the Dead kept me within the world long enough that I didn’t see the reveal coming (though I did see the building thing coming).